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AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

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Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#351
post #180
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has never happened to me. It's likely you have a defective unit, take it in.

Apple won't replace or fix for this, it's something many many many Airpods Pro owners have complained about (including myself).

My fam is 2/3 this issue happening with their pros. It’s super annoying to have to babysit the case to make sure they’re actually charging.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#352

i hope the volume control can be disabled (though i doubt this will be the case). i’ve never met a touch sensitive headphone volume control that wasn’t susceptible to accidental triggering. i have too many issues with my hearing to risk that.

I hope so too. I disabled touch controls on my WH-1000XM3 (the over the ear type) because an accidental swipe would rewind or skip to the next item (e.g. videos on YouTube). When I have to adjust the earbud version (WF-1000XM3) it's really easy to touch the controls on accident as well. Even the Airpods Pro that I have can be touchy when adjusting because they have sensors to pause when you take them out and resume when you put them back in (great feature) but they also sometimes pause (or unpause) incorrectly depending on the situation. (I just realized that is an option that can be disabled so I'm torn about disabling it now. Single click does pause and unpause as well.)

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#353
post #190

I'm still not convinced that Bluetooth earbuds are safe, and yes, I'm aware they don't produce ionizing radiation. No one here is concerned about having them in your ear canal for hours every day for years is essentially no worse than wearing a hat that keeps your head equally warm? What is the most convincing, clear evidence of a lack of long term health issues?

Just to be clear, are you suggesting that wearing a hat causes some sort of damage to one's health? And further than that, a hat that kept one's head as warm as two one inch pieces of plastic? Obviously I don't have data to back it up, but I can't imagine even gluing a pair of AirPods to one's face for one's entire life would make any significant impact on lifespan. Other than maybe all the glue. EDIT: And if you're…

I doubt hat wearing is physically harmful, but it does warm your head, and that's one of the claims against Bluetooth headsets. I find that a non-danger. But it may not be the only one, e.g., voltage-gated calcium channels. I haven't looked into and wondered if anyone wanted to chime in with the latest.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#354
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth, especially with bidirectional audio. Apple added support for an improved speech codec, AAC-ELD, to the 3rd gen AirPods last year: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/introducing-the-next-... AAC-ELD support was also apparently added to existing AirPods Pro and Max at the same time: https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr... I'm not sure whe…

> It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth, especially with bidirectional audio. I've often read this is the problem, but I don't buy it. BTLE is up to 1 megabit. A high-quality audio stream is typically up to 320 kbps compressed. Voice can be compressed as low as 64 kbps and still sound as if the person is standing right next to you. That's still less than 400 kbps, well under the 1 mbps BTLE supports. S…

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Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Apple made a set of ear buds that had a strap They make a bunch of these, but for some reason always under the Beats brand. I assume the battery longevity is just as bad though.

Unless I’m missing something, the only offering from Beats is the Flex. The rest are either over-ear “studio” headphones or true wireless. The Flex might be ok, but it doesn’t use the same chipset as the AirPods, so I don’t know if it pairs as seamlessly between 3+ devices or if they’ll work as well for teleconferencing.

My mistake - I was thinking of the old Beats X, but I guess that's discontinued now that the Flex is on the scene.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#356
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. You put them in the case, hold the one button (basically the “pair” button) for a sec, and connect from your device. Bam. Work perfectly after that.

For some reason on Windows AirPods show up as two different types of devices (not left and right) one of which sounds very bad with a lot of noise. And of course if you connect AirPods with your iPhone and your Windows laptop they’ll start fighting over who gets to connect.

I believe the different Bluetooth codecs show up as different devices under Windows, so I assume the noisy one is the one for calls. Not sure exactly why it’s like this.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#357

It's wild how much money Apple has made from Bluetooth headphones that don't suck. That's literally it. They're portable, pair easily and (somewhat) work with multiple devices. I have top of the line Bose Bluetooth headphones that still, in 2022, have issues with multiple devices. I can't count how many times I've started playing music on my iPhone only to realize that the headphones think my laptop is playing, so th…

Honestly I still feel they forced the success by removing the headphone jack. I know the market is 'proving me wrong' but a market without a choice isn't purely voting with their dollars but voting with a single option.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#358
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh I didn't know that! The problem was nonexistent for me during that period, so it wasn't a priority to "fix" my working product. The issue has become much more pronounced in the period since the warranty expired. Lesson learned: bring in the working product if there's a known recall regardless of if it's fine at the moment. Won't let that happen again.

Yeah I had a similar issue and the process was super painless. It didn't require going into a store. They shipped you a box with a prepaid label where you put in your problematic AirPods. Then they shipped you a new pair for free. Turnaround time was fast.

This thread has been eye opening. I’ll check out online support and see if that’s better than in person. In person is a lot stingier now than it was 5 years back.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#359
I really want to buy a pair of AirPods, but I’ve been hesitant to because hearing in my left ear is seemingly slowly fading away and I think it was partly because I use to wear EarBuds at max volume all of the time when I was a teen. I know Apple has a headphone safety feature which limits the maximum dB they’re outputting; Even then I always feel super guilty that I might be damaging my hearing further whenever I use headphones in general. It’s already damn near impossible for me to hear someone talking if I’m eating for instance, or if some other noise is even remotely overshadowing what I’m trying to listen to. Never fails to bring me down:(

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no other product that does what it does as well as it does it. It's a no-brainer purchase for me and I won't even blink at replacing them if they're ever lost. I basically can't imagine my life without them (walking around the city, workouts, playing sports, airports/planes, etc). I can imagine this is much less important if you live in a suburb and mostly commute via car or don't have physically active hobbi…

Thought experiment: what’s the highest price Apple could charge for them, after which you’d pass on the purchase?

The absolute highest? I think they could go as high as $500 and I can still justify it.

Of course, this opens up a huge price window for competitors to occupy so at some point it makes more sense to get something cheaper to get 80% of the functionality. But this also goes to show how much I value that final 20%.

At the price of $250 today, there really isn't any legitimate competition IMO.

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